It was Lou Dobbs’s victory lap. On June 29, a day after the
Senate applied what appeared to be the coup de grace to the immigration bill,
its most vocal media opponent read some congratulatory emails on his CNN show.
“Thanks Lou, for presenting the views of legal American
citizens,” wrote “Joan from Virginia.”
“We love you Lou. Your hard work paid off. Thank you. Thank
you,” enthused “Fred from Florida.”
“Thank you Lou Dobbs for leading the charge against this
immigration bill,” added “E. from Washington.”
In the weeks between the May 17 introduction of the Senate
immigration legislation and its June 28 demise, many hosts—including conservatives
such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity—mounted an aggressive
campaign against the bill. But over the long haul, no one devoted more energy
to derailing what he called the “amnesty” measure than Dobbs, the veteran CNN
personality who has transformed himself from a pinstriped chronicler of the
corporate boardroom to a full-blown populist, though he still has the suits. (Critics
might use other words to describe him.)
In the last three months, from April 1-June 29, Dobbs
devoted more than a quarter (26%) of the airtime on his nightly show to
immigration. (That’s almost twice as much attention as he gave to the next
leading subject, the Iraq
war policy debate.) Last week, the immigration debate was the most popular
cable and radio talk topic, filling 24% of the airtime, according to PEJ’s Talk
Show Index from June 24-29. And nearly half the week’s talk stories on
immigration originated from Dobbs’s program, including the segment in which he
basked in the citizen kudos.
While immigration dominated the talk menu, the failed London
car bomb plot—which occurred on the last day of the week examined in this
Index—was the second-biggest topic (12%). It was a much bigger subject on cable
than radio. The controversy over Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive and
unprecedented influence over policy in the White House, explored in a Washington
Post series, was next at 9%. For liberal critics of the Vice President such as
radio’s Randi Rhodes and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, the Post’s articles were irresistible
ammunition.
With last week largely devoid of major campaign news, the
2008 White House race was the sixth-biggest talk subject (filling 6% of the
time, plummeting from 25% the previous week). You have to go back to April
15-20, when the horrific Virginia Tech shooting spree consumed 63% of the talk
newshole, to find a week when the campaign got less attention on the talk shows.
The talk universe topic list continues to be somewhat
different than the agenda seen in PEJ’s more general News Coverage Index each
week. Four subjects that made talk’s top-10 story list failed to register that
high in the general news Index. The grisly family murder/suicide apparently perpetrated
by professional wrestler Chris Benoit was the fourth-biggest topic at 7% in
talk. Socialite Paris Hilton’s release from jail was the tenth-biggest subject
at 3%. The other two subjects that generated more talk attention than general
coverage involved the media directly. One was the exchange of words between
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, and conservative
commentator Ann Coulter over civility in politics (seventh at 6%). The other
was an argument over ideology on the talk airwaves (eighth at 4%).
The Talk Show
Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists
and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most
frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a
segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index
includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset
of our News Coverage Index.
Paris Hilton’s return from incarceration and the Benoit
tragedy were two very different crime stories that intrigued some talk hosts last
week. The Benoit case—in which police say he killed his wife and seven-year-old
son before hanging himself—may end up opening a window on the issue of steroids in
the physically demanding world of pro wrestling.
On the June 28 edition of MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,”—the
program that devoted by far the most attention to the issue—guest host Dan
Abrams discussed the subject with pro grapplers “Johnny B. Badd” and “the
Lethal Weapon.”
As the screen displayed the statistic that pro wrestlers
have death rates seven times higher than the general population, Abrams said
“we’ve had former wrestlers on this program...and every one of them talks about
funerals and the fact that a disproportionate number of wrestlers have died.
There’s got to be some explanation for why so many wrestlers are having so many
problems.”
Most of the talk of Hilton’s June 26 release from jail—following
her assertion that she found God and is a changed person—came on the Fox News
Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity & Colmes.” (The “celebutante’s”
June 27 interview with CNN’s Larry King also tripled King’s normal audience.)
The Elizabeth Edwards/Ann Coulter face-off was a media-generated
flare-up that started when Edwards called into the June 26 edition of MSNBC’s
“Hardball” to confront Coulter and ask her “to stop the personal attacks” on
her husband, John Edwards, and others. Coulter responded with: “OK, great the wife of a presidential candidate is
calling in asking me to stop speaking.”
The next night,
the battle continued when John Edwards appeared on “Hardball” to declare that
“when people like Ann Coulter…engage in this kind of hate mongering, you have
to stand up to them.”
Coulter got a
hearing on the June 28 “O’Reilly Factor” where she said she was undaunted by
the Elizabeth Edwards call. “I’m more of a man than any liberal is,” she
declared, “so…I don’t care.”
(For those of you
with a more skeptical bent, it was pointed out on both “Hardball” and “The
O’Reilly Factor” that Coulter has used the confrontation to sell more of her
books and John Edwards has turned the dustup into a fundraising tool.)
Another media-related
issue that is generating momentum on talk radio centers around political
balance on the airwaves. And it was ignited, in part, by a recent report
concluding that conservative hosts overwhelmingly dominate the radio
microphones. That has quickly developed into its own ideological argument with some
conservatives warning of a return to the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation
repealed 20 years ago that required broadcasters to air balancing points of
view on controversial public policy issues.
On his June 27
show, Limbaugh referred to his program as one “that frightens and scares the
American left to the point that they want to deny this program Constitutional
access to the First Amendment.”
A day later, Ed
Schultz, one of a much smaller group of successful liberal hosts, said “I can
guarantee you folks that no one is out there saying ‘let’s have the Fairness
Doctrine.’” And he blamed conservatives for trying to silence liberal voices.
“How come I’m
still on the air?” Schultz added. “They don’t want us here.”
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index
1. Immigration - 24%
2. UK Terror - 12%
3. VP Cheney Controversies - 9%
4. Wrestler Crime - 7%
5. Ohio Woman - 6%
6. Campaign 2008 - 6%
7. Ann Coulter's Comments - 6%
8. Fairness Doctrine - 4%
9. Iraq Policy Debate - 3%
10. Paris Hilton - 3%
Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index
1. Immigration - 12%
2. Campaign 2008 - 6%
3. Supreme Court Actions - 6%
4. UK Terror - 5%
5. VP Cheney Controversies - 5%
6. Lake Tahoe Fire - 5%
7. Events in Iraq - 4%
8. Iraq Policy Debate - 4%
9. Ohio Woman - 3%
10. Texas/Plains Flooding - 3%
Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.
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